Undersea Fleet

9 Sargasso Dome

Eastward and down. Our destination was Sargasso City.

Neither Bob nor Roger Fairfane could get a pass; it was up to David and me to go to Sargasso City and look over the Killer Whale. We argued for a long time whether it was safe for David to come along—if a cadet should see him and recognize him, there would be questions asked! But it seemed that there should be two of us, and that left us no choice.

We booked passage from Hamilton on the regular sub-sea shuttle to Sargasso City, a hundred and fifty miles east of Bermuda and more than two miles straight down. In the short time before our subsea ship left I found a phone booth and placed a long-distance call to my uncle Stewart in far-off Thetis Dome.

There was no answer.

I told the operator: “Please, it’s very important. Can you keep trying?”

“Certainly, sir!” She was all professional competence. “Give me your number, please. I’ll call you back.”

I thought rapidly. That was impossible, of course—I wouldn’t be there for more than a few more minutes. Yet I didn’t want to have my uncle phone me at the Academy, since there was the chance that someone might overhear. I said: “Keep trying, operator. I’ll call you from Sargasso Dome in—” I glanced at my watch—“about two hours.”

David was gesticulating frantically from outside the booth. I hung up and the two of us raced down the long gloomy shed that was the Pan-Carib Line’s dock. We just reached the ship as the gangways were about to come down.

I couldn’t help feeling a little worried for no good reason—naturally, my uncle had plenty to do with his time! There was nothing much to worry about if he wasn’t at home at any particular moment. Still, it was halfway around the world and rather late at night in Thetis Dome; I felt a nagging doubt in the back of my mind that everything was well with him…

But the joy of cruising the deeps again put it out of my mind in a matter of moments.

We slid away from Hamilton port on the surface. As soon as we were safely past the shallows of the shelf we dived cleanly beneath the waves and leveled on course for Sargasso Dome.

The little shuttle vessel was a midget beside the giant Pacific liners in which I had traveled to Thetis Dome long before, but it was two hundred feet long for all of that. Because it was small, discipline was free and easy, and David and I were able to roam the crew spaces and the enginerooms without much trouble. It made the time pass quickly. At seventy knots the entire voyage took a little less than two hours; the time was gone before we knew it.

We disembarked at Sargasso City through edenite coupler tubes and immediately looked for a phone booth.

I poured coins into it, and got the same operator once more by dialing her code number.

There was still no answer.

I left the call in, and David and I asked directions to the Fleet basin where the surplus ships lay idle, waiting to be sold at public auction.

The Killer Whale lay side by side with the old Dolphin in the graving docks at the bottom of Sargasso Dome.

Neither was particularly big—they’d both been small enough to fit in the ship lock that let them into the city from the cold deeps outside. But the Dolphin seemed like a skiff next to the Killer Whale. We didn’t waste time looking at her; we quickly boarded the Killer through the main hatch and examined her from stem to stern.

David looked up at me, his eyes glistening. “She’s a beauty,” he whispered.

I nodded. The Killer Whale was one of the last Class-K subsea cruisers built. There was nothing wrong with her, nothing at all, except that in the past ten years there had been so many improvements in subsea weapons—requiring different mounts, different design from stem to stern—that the Fleet had condemned every vessel more than a decade old. The process of conversion was nearly complete, and only a few old-timers like the Dolphin and the Killer Whale still remained to be replaced.

There were crew quarters for sixteen men. “We’ll rattle around in her,” I told David. “But we can handle her. One of us on the engines and one at the controls; we can split up and take twelve-hour shifts. She’ll run like a dream, you’ll see.”

He put his hand on the master’s wheel as though he were touching a holy object. “She’s a beauty,” he said again. “Well, let’s go up and see about putting in a bid.”

That took a little bit of the spell off the moment for both of us. Putting in a bid—but what did we have to bid with? Unless my uncle Stewart could help—and he was very far from being a rich man—we couldn’t raise the price of the little escape capsule the Whale carried in her bilges, much less the cost of the whole cruiser.

In the office of the lieutenant-commander in charge of disposing of the two vessels we were informed that the rock-bottom bid that would be accepted was fifty thousand dollars. The officer looked us over and grinned. “Pretty expensive to buy out of your allowances, boys,” he said. “Why don’t you settle for something a little smaller—say, a toy sailboat?”

For the first time in my life I regretted wearing the dress scarlet uniform of an Academy cadet—in civilian clothes, I would have felt a lot freer to tell him what I thought! David stepped in front of me to avert the explosion.

“How do we go about putting in a bid?” he asked.

The officer lost a little of his amused look. “Why,” the said, “if you’re serious about this, all you have to do is take one of these application forms and fill it in. Put down your name and address and the amount you’re prepared to bid. You’ll have to post a bond of one-third of the amount you’re bidding before the bids are opened, otherwise your bid won’t even be considered. That’s all there is to it.”

“May I have a form for the Killer Whale then, sir?”

The lieutenant commander looked at him, then shrugged. “Killer, eh?” he said, scrabbling through the pile of forms on his desk. “You’re smart there, anyway. The Dolphin’s nothing but a heap of rust. I ought to know—I served in her myself, as an ensign. But what in the world do you want a cruiser for, young man—even if you had the money to pay for it?”

David coughed. “I—I want it for my father,” he said, and quickly took the forms from the officer’s hand.

We retired to the outer office, clutching the forms. It was a big, public room, full of people, some of whom looked at us curiously. We found a corner where we could go over the papers.

I looked over David’s shoulder. The forms were headed Application for Purchase of Surplus Subsea Vessel, and on the first page was a space where the names of the Killer Whale and the Dolphin had been filled in for us. David promptly put a big check mark next to the Killer Whale. He filled in my name and address and hesitated over the space marked: Amount offered.

I stopped him.

“Hold on a second,” I said. “Let me try calling my uncle again. There’s phone booth right across the room.”

He grinned. “Might as well see if we’re going to be able to pay for it,” he agreed.

This time my call went right through.

But the person who answered was not my uncle. It was a vision-phone, and the picture before my eyes swirled and cleared and took form. It was Gideon Park—my uncle’s most trusted helper, the man who had saved my life in the drains under Thetis Dome so long ago!

His black face looked surprised, then grinned, his teeth flashing white. “Young Jim! It’s good to see you, boy!” Then he looked oddly concerned. “I guess you want your uncle, eh? He’s—uh—he can’t be reached right now, Jim. Can I help you? You’re not in trouble at the Academy, are you?”

“No, nothing like that, Gideon. Where is my uncle?”

He hesitated. “Well, Jim—”

“Gideon! What’s the matter? Is anything wrong?”

He said, “Now, hold on, Jim. He’s going to be all right. But he’s—well, he’s sleeping right now. I’ve had the phone disconnected all day so as not to disturb him, and I don’t want to wake him up unless—”

“Gideon, tell me what’s wrong with my uncle!” He said soberly: “It isn’t too bad, I promise you that, Jim. But the truth is, he’s sick.”

“Sick!”

Gideon nodded, the black face worried and sympathetic. “He had some sort of an attack. Three days ago it was. He got a letter from an old acquaintance of his. He was reading it, right here at his desk, when suddenly he keeled over—”

“A heart attack?”

Gideon shook his head. He said in his soft, warm voice: “Nothing so simple, Jim. All the sea-medics say is that your uncle has been under too much pressure. He has lived too deep, too long.”

That was true enough, no doubt of it. I remembered my uncle’s long, exciting life in the Deeps. The time when he had been trapped—just a few months back—in a crippled ship at the bottom of the deepest trench in the southwest Pacific. His recovery had seemed complete, when Gideon and I found him and brought him back—but the human body was not evolved for the life of a deep-sea fish. High pressure and drugs can sometimes have unexpected effects.

“Can I speak to him?”

“Well—the sea-medics say he shouldn’t have too much excitement, Jim. Is it—is it anything I can help with?”

I only paused a second—I knew I could trust Gideon as much as my uncle himself. I began to pour out the whole mixed-up story of the pearly-eyed men and the Tonga pearls and David Craken—

“Craken? Did you say David Craken?”

I stopped, staring at Gideon through the viewscreen. “Why, yes, Gideon. His father’s name is Jason Craken— or that’s what he calls himself.”

“A queer thing! Craken, Jim—that’s the letter that came! The letter your uncle was reading when he had the attack—from Jason Craken!” He hesitated a second.

Then: “Hold on, Jim,” he ordered. “Sink the sea-medics—I’ll wake him up!”

There was a moment’s pause, then a quick shadowy flicker as Gideon transferred the call at his end to an extension in my uncle’s bedroom.

I saw my uncle Stewart sitting, propped up, in a narrow bed. His face looked hollow and thin, but he smiled to see me. Evidently he had been lying there awake, for there was no trace of sleepiness in his manner.

“Jim!” His voice seemed hoarse and weary, but strong. What’s this stuff Gideon is telling me?”

Quickly I told him what I had told Gideon—and more, from the moment I had met David Craken on the gym ship until the actual filling out of the bid for purchase of the Killer Whale. “And he said to call you, Uncle Stewart,” I finished. “And—and so I did.”

“I’m glad you did, Jim!” My uncle closed his eyes for a second, thinking, “We’ve got to help him, Jim,” he said at last. “It’s a debt of honor.”

“A debt?” I stared at the viewscreen. “But I didn’t know you ever heard of Jason Craken—”

He nodded. “It’s something I never told you, Jim. Years ago, when your father and I were young. We were exploring the rim of the Tonga Trench—as far down as we could go in the diving gear we had then. We were looking for pearls. Tonga pearls.”

He nodded. “Tonga pearls,” he said again.” Well, we found them. But we couldn’t keep them, Jim, because while your father and I were out in pressure suits—right at the bottom of the safe limit—we were attacked. I—I can’t tell you what attacked us, Jim, because I gave my word. Perhaps the Crakens themselves will tell you sometime. But we were hauled farther and farther down into the deep—far past the rated limits of our armor. It began to fail.”

He paused, remembering that far-off day. Oddly, he smiled. “I thought we were done then, Jim,” he said. “But we were rescued. The man who rescued us was—Jason Craken.

“Jason Craken!” My uncle was sitting up now, and for a moment his voice was strong. “A strange name—for a strange man! He was short-spoken, almost rude, a little odd. He wore a beard. He dressed like a dandy. He had a taste for luxuries, a lavish spender, a generous host. And a very shrewd man, Jim. He sold Tonga pearls—no one else could compete with him, because no one else knew where they came from. It was worth a fortune to him to keep that monopoly secret, Jim.

“And your father and I—we knew the secret. And he saved our lives.

“He risked his own life to save us—and he endangered the secret of the pearls. But he trusted us. We promised never to come back to the Tonga Trench. We gave our word never to say where the pearls came from.

“And if he needs help now, Jim—it’s up to you and me to see that he gets it.”

He frowned. “I—I can’t do much myself, Jim—I’m laid up for a while. I suppose it was the shock of Jason Craken’s letter. But he mentioned that he might need money for a fighting ship, and I’ve been able to raise some. Not a fortune. But—enough, I think. I’ll see that you get it as fast as I can get it to you. Buy the Killer Whale for him. Help him any way you can.”

He slumped back against the bed and grinned at me. “That’s all, Jim. Better sign off now—this call must be costing a fortune! But remember—we owe a lot to Jason Craken, because if it hadn’t been for him neither you nor I would be here now.”

And that was all.

I turned, a little shaken, to where David was waiting outside the booth.

“It’s all right, David,” I told him, glancing around the room. “He’s going to help. We’ll get some money from him—enough, he says. And—”

I broke off. “David!” I cried. “Look—over there, where we were filling out the application forms!”

He whirled. He had left the forms on a little desk to come over while I called my uncle. They were still there—and over them was bending the figure of a man.

Or was it man? For the figure turned and saw us looking at him—saw us with pearly eyes, that contracted and glared. It was the person from the sea who called himself “Joe Trencher”!

He turned and ran—through the door, out into the crowded passages beyond. “Come on!” cried David. “Let’s catch him—maybe he’s still got the pearls!”